Personalizing Learning: The Advisor/Advisee Model

Research on good schooling demonstrates that every student should feel well- connected within a small, safe learning environment. One way to achieve this goal is to provide each student with an advisor. The advisor, or student advocate, is concerned with the social, emotional, and physical growth of the whole child. An advisor/advisee system consists of students and teachers that serve as student advocates. This type of personalized schooling is one of the hallmarks of an excellent high school. Improved student-teacher relationships lead to improved student learning. Teams of teachers, administrators, guidance counselors and other interested school staff will examine the issues involved in advisory programs and create an advisor/advisee system tailored to their individual school.

Goals:

To create a structure that offers support for each learner in the school

To build relationships that form a strong community foundation

To extend the academic success and life skills of all learners

Participants will:

Design a structure to support consistent and long term interactions between students and advisor

Set purpose, goals and outcomes for implementation of advisory model

Outline the content of the advisory sessions and prepare core materials

Write a clear job description of the advisor’s role

Plan an on-going assessment process to continually update and revise program